Pear,
you hang from your tree
like a teardrop grown solid,
like snow with a freckled skin.
When the handless maiden
came to you in moonlight, hungry,
she stretched up and took you
into her mouth.
Her father had sold her
to the devil and lopped off her hands,
but you bent to her, Pear,
and offered yourself, breast
and milk both, the earth
grown pendulous and sweet.
About the Author: Nan Fry's collection of poetry, Relearning the Dark, won the Washington Writers' Publishing House competition in 1991. Her work has also appeared on posters in the transit systems of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland, as part of the Poetry Society of America's Poetry in Motion® Program; in magazines and journals such as Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Poet Lore, and The Wallace Stevens Journal; in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror annual, and in the anthologies The Faery Reel and Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast. She lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2005 by Nan Fry. The poem first appeared in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #15, January 2005. It may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.